PPPS

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As an addendum to yesterday's post, I want to share this meditation on the priesthood as it pertains to the Holy Eucharist. On Wednesday evening, at the peak of my self-imposed, guilt-induced stress-out, I peaked ahead at the next day's My Daily Eucharist meditation, and I found a sign (o.k., I was looking for one, but it was there, wasn't it?).

Even if I don't have a priest in my family, I must pray for an increase of vocations to the priesthood -- we must all pray. For without the priest, there is no Eucharist.

"For hundreds of years, since the Holy Thursday institution, men have chosen to become priests. Better, God has chosen them.

We are among those chosen to succeed the Apostles. Only God knows why. 365 times a year for over thirty-eight years (12,870 times) I have acted in the place of Christ and said, "This is my body. This is my blood," more than the first half of the years in Latin, the latter decade or so in the vernacular. Always for me, God's most unworthy servant, with awe and trepidation.

We hold Christ in trembling hands and we kneel before the tabernacle with head held between our hands, lest, like Judas, we betray the Lord. We must pray to be worthy of the Eucharist, which we call down on the altar and dispense to the saints, the living saints of the Church. Some priests gave the Eucharist to St. Francis of Assisi and St. Therese of Lisieux, to St. Theresa of Avila and to all the unknown saints. Today a priest gives the Eucharist to Mother Teresa and her sisters -- how unworthy we would be of that privilege!*We are not the Cure who spent hours in prayer at Ars before the Eucharist, especially before the crowds started to come. But the Lord still wants us to say Mass, to call people to the Eucharist.

Priests form an innumerable family -- from St. John the Apostle until now, from St. Peter top John Paul II. The priesthood must be transmitted unto the end of time. Pray before the Eucharist for priests, that they be Eucharistic priests. Pray to the Eucharistic Jesus that there will be priests." Msgr. John F. David -- An Audience with Jesus

* published in 1996

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